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I don't remember seeing female spending all those money toward gaming as much as guys. Some even went as far as criticizing me for spending 60$ for a piece of software. Do you think they will cater to female gamer when that is the common sight?

Then explain why Tales events often have more female fans at them than male fans? This fact basically completely negates every argument you can make against it.

First, I want to see some numbers for this.

Second, even if it did have a higher female fanbase, what does that prove? How does that change anything? The fans it happens to attract does not change what it was originally aimed after, what tropes it plays and what gender it those tropes benefit the most.

Now if you can find me an interview where the developers state that it was intended for a gender-neutral audience first before anything else I would take back what I said.

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Originally Posted by Mr Hat and Clogs

Personally I think labeling a game male or female only to be somewhat archaic (maybe even insulting these days). People are going to like what they like regardless of gender. Maybe certain genres could be expanded upon to increase appeal to a wider audience but designing something specifically for one gender these days is a failed ideal. I just point at the success of the MLP series as an example - on the surface its something for young girls, but yeah it has a... surprising amount of male viewers.

Basically, you can aim your stuff at a certain gender but have a majority of the other gender(or alarmingly high amount) get into it anyway, that doesn't change what gender it was primarily focused on.

If the Barbie series ended up having a primarily male fanbase that does not change that they are primarily focused on girls.

Second, even if it did have a higher female fanbase, what does that prove? How does that change anything? The fans it happens to attract does not change what it was originally aimed after, what tropes it plays and what gender it those tropes benefit the most.

90% of the favorite character rankings are filled with Bishounen- something completely unheard of if male fans were in charge.

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"The blood makes us human... Makes us more than human... Makes us human no more..."

If the Barbie series ended up having a primarily male fanbase that does not change that they are primarily focused on girls.

Funny, I thought about the Dollfies.

I remember that years before there were attempts to pitch games to the female demographic with politically-correct themes, but realistically, most of them -- being casuals -- will rather play Facebook games because they can play and socialize at the same time without the extra hardware required unlike MMOs. Just ask my sister, she's playing one of those games right now.

One of the reasons I really dislike F2P games, you end up paying more in the end than you normally would, if you don't mind paying.

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Originally Posted by cronnoponno

Basically, you can aim your stuff at a certain gender but have a majority of the other gender(or alarmingly high amount) get into it anyway, that doesn't change what gender it was primarily focused on.

If the Barbie series ended up having a primarily male fanbase that does not change that they are primarily focused on girls.

No, but it should send a message that things aren't so cut and dry in regards to what interests whom.

I got a game for girls! It's called Maplestory :P You can't really say it's male-oriented, because no matter how hard Nexon tries to make it look cool, it's just a cute 2D grinder with a good chat system.

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I'm thinking about how I, a male, got into gaming. Were the games I started playing so male oriented? (Sonic The Hedgehog).

The 90s games were neutral imo. Tetris, Pac-man, Sonic, Mario, Kirby and Donkey Kong were just as likeable to both boys and girls (and no, Mario and DK are NOT male-oriented because you get to save a girl, because that's not the point of the game). Since I was on multiple platforms at the time, I also thoroughly enjoyed escape from monkey island, the lemmings and Syndicate.

Maplestory used to be much better, I quit it now because it's mindless and spammy.

Back then it was spammy, but the game was built with that in mind, bosses couldn't just be mindlessly solod by a maxed out class that just came out five seconds ago on the test server doing 999999999999 damage with the flick of a rest with 20 pets out and a bunch of annoying floaty NX effects clogging up the screen with some ugly-ass wings that you can't toggle off(or some other stupid feature like the voice acting) with only preset characters coming out(gotta have those presets!) and every character being revamped into a totally unoriginal type that has every mobility skill that used to make Hermits unique before fourth job was out.

There's no point to playing the game anymore, every class has A: An attack that stupidly spreads across the entire screen and a single hitting move, some type of flash jump move, and depending on how new the class is, retarded jetpacking moves that throttle you to any height the map has making stuff like mounts useless.

I am pretty bitter over that game, I really liked it, I could tolerate the grind...now it turned into complete crap and the story isn't as good as it's defenders claim to be, yeah I know you can appeal that it's my opinion but whatever, they can have fun playing their pissed off demons who are good guys because the bad guy killed his family, best story here man, totally worth the amount of roleplay and immersion they CRUSHED in favor of presets.

Nah, I also share the same experience of happily grinding to 76 back when 3rd job wasn't out yet and the 199->200 exp gap was 2.1 billion exp, but I quit after 4 years (eventually hitting 14X, stayed because of friends). Anyway, its current state aside, it really did have a large female population and not just guys playing as girls, since I happened to meet an entire guild in person.

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MapleStory is anything but cute. It's a microtransaction monster that will devour your wallet in mere seconds.

Yeah, when they add obvious P2P quests to unlock the next hunting grounds, it just gets pathetic =/

I think it's further complicated because there is also gamer vs non-gamer layer that makes things worse.

For example, mainstream dictates that it's not acceptable for a grown man to play games. To a non-gamer female this kind of man is a childish thrash to be shunned.

I've known more than a few people who keep their gaming hobbies a secret from people they are dating. When asked about it, they would claim that it belonged to their cousin or nephew.

Likewise grown women who play games are considered weird.. unless it's Angry Bird.

I hope time will change things, but I'm not expecting a miracle.

Not only does video game have to fight its own industry, it also has to fight TV and Hollywood who control the spin on videogames. It's an uphill battle.

Times are changing, the % of girl gamers are on the rise and have been going up every year. Not only that, the number of women in videogame industry is also increasing. Changes occur slowly but if you compare videogames to say, the automotive industry.. it's maturing and diversifying in a rapid pace.

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Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

Alright then what do girls do for fun that can't be mistaken for male focus? Make a video game around that then.

It's called The Sims. If COD/MW represents male gamer, The Sims is probably the best example for female gamers.

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Originally Posted by synaesthetic

I would be really interested in the option of playing Bioshock Infinite from Elizabeth's perspective. It would be a completely different game.

It would probably be boring all you do is scavenge for items to throw at an inept AI and waiting for him to kill off all the baddies.

It's called The Sims. If COD/MW represents male gamer, The Sims is probably the best example for female gamers.

No really, iirc the sims was designed to be gender neutral, leading towards to men with god complex. Female gamers picking up the sims and becoming a large following share of the series was unpredicted, same as with the Professor Layton series or animal crossing. These games weren't designed specifically for a certain audience, but for wider appeal, and that is why they are or were successful for their period of time.
If you got a good game, with good mechanics, challenges, and nowadays a good story people will buy it. There is really no point in creating games just for boys or just for girls, unless you don't want to make big money or you are being pushed by someone to do so...

No really, iirc the sims was designed to be gender neutral, leading towards to men with god complex. Female gamers picking up the sims and becoming a large following share of the series was unpredicted, same as with the Professor Layton series or animal crossing. These games weren't designed specifically for a certain audience, but for wider appeal, and that is why they are or were successful for their period of time.

While the original sims were meant to be gender neutral, the later millions of expansions is very much female focused.

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If you got a good game, with good mechanics, challenges, and nowadays a good story people will buy it. There is really no point in creating games just for boys or just for girls, unless you don't want to make big money or you are being pushed by someone to do so...

That's quite a lot of IF's there but in reality is you can never be sure whether it's an actual good game that people will pick up until release. That's why games contains theme and elements that are appealing to targeted groups.

Not everyone research about games before they buy it anyway so just having a good game doesn't mean you'll make money.

Well, that's because it's almost impossible to tell them apart these days, with all their grays and browns and chest high walls and QTEs. About the only 'modern' shooter I've seen get anywhere truly positive praise would be Spec Ops: The Line, and that's mostly because of the soul murdering story line (and it's a change from 'murcia savin' tha world from evil).

I don't have a link off hand, and I'm not going to scour the internet for the interview, but in an interview it was stated that there are more female fans at these events than male fans. Reason? They absolutely love the voice actors.

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Second, even if it did have a higher female fanbase, what does that prove?

That you're wrong about it being a game that only men enjoy.

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How does that change anything? The fans it happens to attract does not change what it was originally aimed after, what tropes it plays and what gender it those tropes benefit the most.

It means you clearly don't know Tales and are just looking at it as superficially as possible. You look at the main character and denounce the entire game based on said character. Last I checked, every game has at least 6 characters who, while maybe not the "main" character, just almost as much screen time.

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Now if you can find me an interview where the developers state that it was intended for a gender-neutral audience first before anything else I would take back what I said.

You're the one making the claim that it's made for males. I'm making the claim that it is made to be a game to appeal to all fans, and data from real life supports that. Interviews with them have only had them say they make it "for Japan", which indicates that they aren't specifying a gender. The games are made by males, so there's bound to be some bias in terms of story and design (though one of the two character designers is female), but they are not made "for men", only "by men". They know that a vast majority of their sales come from females because they love the male voice actors and characters.

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Basically, you can aim your stuff at a certain gender but have a majority of the other gender(or alarmingly high amount) get into it anyway, that doesn't change what gender it was primarily focused on.

Please provide me an interview that shows Namco Bandai stating that Tales Of is focused on males.

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Originally Posted by Chaos2Frozen

90% of the favorite character rankings are filled with Bishounen- something completely unheard of if male fans were in charge.

This too. I'm pretty sure Milla is the only female character to crack the top 10.